Man in Universe - Jeremy Thomas
We have been exploring lying, why we lie and why it is an addiction quite omnipresent in our industrialized societies. We also talked about the fact that there are all kinds and levels of lies and that although most lies are apparently benign, they are only apparently so.
All lies leave a mark, a scar in our dignity, in who we think we are and in the way we relate to ourselves and to the rest of the world.
The liar thinks, or lies to himself into thinking, that he can keep the pretense, but he cannot hide forever. We all know most of the time when someone is lying. We feel it, and we don’t like it, we end up resenting the liar.
Sooner or later, lying corrodes all relationships, primarily with yourself and then with all others.
Most people lie without even knowing they are lying, it is their default way of communicating, so they make excuses, give explanations, hide information, twist facts for many reasons but most commonly to save face or to make others believe they are “more” of what they are not, and they even lie to avoid hurting others. We are “experts” at masking the truth.
I just came across an interesting take on lying: what Seth Godin calls “modern lazy” a 21st Century style of laziness. He says:
"the old lazy avoided cleaning the garage or doing the dishes or cutting the grass, but that the “modern lazy avoids emotional labor.”
This modern lazy is a typical modern liar. It is someone that has sold his soul to the comfort of not being accountable for most anything of true value. The modern lazy hides behind “non-commitment” and “non-interfering” because he does not want to do the “emotional labor” that committing requires.
This modern lazy avoids emotional labor. And what that means is that the modern lazy lacks the courage to question her convictions, lacks the dignity to look at the facts as she sees them, to ask the obvious question because it may result in a painful answer, to be fully present for the other or for a cause that she is pretending to care for, to get involved with what she knows is just, with what can help others, to encourage meaningful conversations and true dialogues instead of arguments, or to face her fears.
This emotional laziness paints the sorrow picture of a life lived in the darkness of a lie.
If left unchecked it becomes our digital imprint and the sad irrelevant mark we end up leaving behind us in this world.
Modern lazy is not aware of how much he is depriving himself of the riches of life. He is not present to life in all its colors and textures; he glides over them terrified of losing distance and landing over them.
Modern lazy chooses to live life in hiding, escaping from contributing to the world. But what he does not know is that if one day he throws away his mask, he can with his unique and dignified truth enhance the quality of his life and the integrity of his world.
Love and light,
Monica
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